4 ms·

Buttons with no labels are certainly not a modern design trend. A lot of older (Windows, mostly) software had a complex interface consisting of a menubar, a too

by dvdkon 8y ago

Buttons with no labels are certainly not a modern design trend. A lot of older (Windows, mostly) software had a complex interface consisting of a menubar, a toolbar (that sometimes had functionality not available elsewhere), and a space for "internal windows". The icons were usually 16x16 and it was really unclear what they were supposed to represent. At least mouseover text was reasonably common.

int_19h 8y ago
Most apps allowed you to customize toolbars, and displaying labels next to the icons was one of the options. However, no conforming app should have had any functionality in the toolbar that was not available in the menu bar. This isn't to say that nobody ever did it, but the OS design guidelines were very clear on that point.
OkGoDoIt 8y ago
But at least mouseover tooltips were common. It’s downright rare to see tooltips nowadays, almost never on mobile apps especially.